Shaking Hands With Death

Why we all deserve a life worth living and a death worth dying for ‘Most men don’t fear death. They fear those things – the knife, the shipwreck, the illness, the bomb – which precede, by microseconds if you’re lucky, and many years if you’re not, the moment of death.’ When Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in his fifties he was angry - not with death but with the disease that would take him there, and with the suffering disease can cause when we are not allowed to put an end to it. In this essay, broadcast to millions as the BBC Richard Dimblebly Lecture 2010 and previously only available as part of A Slip of the Keyboard, he argues for our right to choose - our right to a good life, and a good death too.

Why we all deserve a life worth living and a death worth dying for ‘Most men don’t fear death. They fear those things – the knife, the shipwreck, the illness, the bomb – which precede, by microseconds if you’re lucky, and many years if you’re not, the moment of death.’ When Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in his fifties he was angry - not with death but with the disease that would take him there, and with the suffering disease can cause when we are not allowed to put an end to it. In this essay, broadcast to millions as the BBC Richard Dimblebly Lecture 2010 and previously only available as part of A Slip of the Keyboard, he argues for our right to choose - our right to a good life, and a good death too.

On the tenth anniversary of the date that UN peacekeepers landed in Rwanda, Random House Canada is proud to publish the unforgettable first-hand account of the genocide by the man who led the UN mission. Digging deep into shattering memories, General Dallaire has written a powerful story of betrayal, naïveté, racism and international politics. His message is simple and undeniable: “Never again.” When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire received the call to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in 1993, he thought he was heading off on a modest and straightforward peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned and suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in only a hundred days. In Shake Hands with the Devil, he takes the reader with him on a return voyage into the hell of Rwanda, vividly recreating the events the international community turned its back on. This book is an unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the genocide, despite timely warnings. Woven through the story of this disastrous mission is Dallaire’s own journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of peace, reconciliation and hope. This book is General Dallaire’s personal account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth and secure in his assumptions to a man conscious of his own weaknesses and failures and critical of the institutions he’d relied on. It might not sit easily with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what happened to General Dallaire and his mission to Rwanda is crucial to understanding the moral minefields our peacekeepers are forced to negotiate when we ask them to step into the world’s dirty wars. Excerpt from Shake Hands with the Devil My story is not a strictly military account nor a clinical, academic study of the breakdown of Rwanda. It is not a simplistic indictment of the many failures of the UN as a force for peace in the world. It is not a story of heroes and villains, although such a work could easily be written. This book is a cri de coeur for the slaughtered thousands, a tribute to the souls hacked apart by machetes because of their supposed difference from those who sought to hang on to power. . . . This book is the account of a few humans who were entrusted with the role of helping others taste the fruits of peace. Instead, we watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect.

Terry Pratchett in his own words With a foreword by Neil Gaiman Terry Pratchett earned a place in the hearts of readers the world over with his bestselling Discworld series – but in recent years he became equally well-known as an outspoken campaigner for causes including Alzheimer’s research and animal rights. A Slip of the Keyboard brings together the best of Pratchett’s non fiction writing on his life, on his work, and on the weirdness of the world: from Granny Pratchett to Gandalf’s love life; from banana daiquiris to books that inspired him; from getting started as a writer to the injustices that he fought to end. With his trademark humour, humanity and unforgettable way with words, this collection offers an insight behind the scenes of Discworld into a much loved and much missed figure – man and boy, bibliophile and computer geek, champion of hats, orang-utans and the right to a good death.

“Much more than a brilliant debut thriller. Dolan’s mile-a-minute story also gets at one of our species’ most important issues―can we choose how to die?” (Dylan Schaffer, author of I Right the Wrongs) In this auspicious debut, Alex Dolan announces himself as a virtuoso of psychological suspense and a rightful heir to masters of the genre like Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott. Kali helps to end the lives of people with terminal diseases, her reasons her own. But she just helped the wrong person. Leland Moon is an FBI agent who couldn’t stop the abduction of his own son. He ropes Kali into a plot to avenge his son and help other victims, putting into a motion a mesmerizing cat-and-mouse game with two ruthless predators. Their mission will make Kali question everything she ever thought she know about herself. And the last life she ends may be her own . . . “Grabbed me from the first page and showed no signs of letting go. Dark and sinewy, topical and timeless, laced with rich characterization and gallows humor, it showcases Dolan as a thriller writer to watch and follow.” —Louis Bayard, bestselling author of Courting Mr. Lincoln “Alex Dolan makes an engrossing debut with The Euthanist . . . Dolan hooks readers from the very start, ratcheting up the tension and suspense until the shocking ending. As a thriller writer, Alex Dolan is set to be one of the best.” —Fresh Fiction “[An] action-packed story . . . Arriving with eerily uncanny timing, Alex Dolan’s debut novel, The Euthanist, tackles the prickly topic of death with dignity.” —San Jose Mercury News

'It's a little book of wonder, it's fantastic' Chris Evans 'A fabulously sparky, wide-ranging and horizon-broadening little study ... joyously unboring' Sunday Times Friends do it, strangers do it and so do chimpanzees - and it's not just deeply embedded in our history and culture, it may even be written in our DNA. The humble handshake, it turns out, has a rich and surprising history. So let's join palaeoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi as she embarks on a funny and fascinating voyage of discovery - from the handshake's origins (at least seven million years ago) all the way to its sudden disappearance in March 2020. Drawing on new research, anthropological insights and first-hand experience, she'll reveal how this most friendly of gestures has played a role in everything from meetings with uncontacted tribes to political assassinations - and what it tells us about the enduring power of human contact. Because the story of the handshake ... is far from over.

Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is having some time off. Apparently. But crime doesn't take a break -- it's a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman on holiday would barely have time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. In the seemingly peaceful countryside, Vimes discovers much more than a body in the wardrobe. For the local nobles are hiding a deep, dark secret. There are many, many bodies -- and an ancient atrocity more terrible than murder. Vimes is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth and out of his mind. But never out of ideas. Where there is a crime there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven. This might be the exception...

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 by: The Washington Post, Vogue, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, The Millions, New York Magazine, Paste Magazine, LitHub, E! News Online, and many more From one of our most ceaselessly provocative literary talents, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds an ominous note on a walk in the woods. While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one. Becoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate. With very little to go on, she invents a list of murder suspects and possible motives for the crime. Oddly, her suppositions begin to find correspondences in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to fade into menacing certainty. As her investigation widens, strange dissonances accrue, perhaps associated with the darkness in her own past; we must face the prospect that there is either an innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one. A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, Death in Her Hands asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both reflect the truth and keep us blind to it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, and the stakes have never been higher.